How to Share Your Mac’s Screen With Another Mac

Mac’s have a lot of great functionality built right into them, that makes using a Mac easy, and augments its capabilities. While you may know about a lot about what you can do natively on a Mac, there are a lot of things that you probably don’t know. One such feature, that is built right in to a Mac, is screen sharing. Screen sharing allows you to share your Mac’s screen (over the same network) with another Mac, while allowing the other Mac to control your computer. If that raised red flags in your mind, don’t worry; screen sharing can be protected by a password, and only people who have the password and username will be able to access, and control your screen. This basically means that you can now share your Mac’s screen, and use it as a remote desktop, if you want to. In this article, I will walk you through the steps that you will have to start sharing your Mac’s screen.

Set Up Screen Sharing

First off, you will need to set up your Mac to be able to share its screen over the network. This can be done very easily. Simply follow the steps given below:

1. Launch System Preferences, and go to Sharing.

2. Here, check the checkbox next to “Screen Sharing“. This will allow you to share your Mac’s screen over the network. Add the users you want to be able to access your Mac from a remote desktop. These user credentials will be required later to log in on the other Mac, and access your shared screen. Also, make a note of the IP address that is written in the Screen Sharing settings screen.

Note: You can also create another User just for sharing screens. This will ensure that you don’t need to give others your main login credentials.

That’s basically all the set up you need to do for sharing your Mac’s screen with another Mac. Now, let’s move on to how you can access your Mac’s screen from the other Mac.

Access a Mac’s Shared Screen on Another Mac

There are multiple ways that you can use to access your Mac’s shared screen on another Mac. We will discuss all of them in this article, and you can use whichever one you prefer more.

1. Using the Finder

To start accessing your Mac’s shared screen on another Mac, and use it as a remote desktop, simply follow the steps below:

Open Finder, and in the sidebar, look for your Mac’s (the one you shared the screen from) name. Click on it. In the window that opens, you should see a button that reads “Share Screen…“. Click on the button.

You will be asked to “Enter your name and password“. Enter the username and password for any one of the users that you added while setting up Screen Sharing, and click Connect.

After a little while, you will see your remote Mac’s screen, and you can control it from the remote desktop.

While you are accessing the shared screen, you can switch between “Control”, and “View” modes, enable or disable scaling, and even access the remote Mac’s clipboard.

2. Using the Screen Sharing App

Many of you might not know this, but there is an app called “Screen Sharing” that comes pre-installed on every Mac. You can use this app to access a remote Mac’s shared screen. In order to do this, simply follow the steps below:

Launch Spotlight, by pressing Command + Space. Type “Screen Sharing“, and hit Enter. The Screen Sharing app will launch, and will ask you for the hostname of the computer you want to connect to. Simply fill in the IP address of your remote desktop here, and click Connect.

You will now be asked to “Enter your name and password“. Enter the login credentials for any of the users that you added while setting up Screen Sharing, and click “Connect“.

You will now be able to view, and control your remote Mac’s screen.

3. Using iMessage

The third, and possibly the easiest way to share a Mac screen, is using iMessage. This doesn’t even require you to set up Screen Sharing in the System Preferences. You can simply share your screen with another Mac, and even control it. Here are the steps you can follow to get this up and going:

Open iMessage on the Mac that you want to share the screen from, as well as on the Mac that you want to share the screen to. Start a conversation on iMessage using the iCloud accounts that are logged in on both the Macs. Next, on the Mac you want to share the screen from, click on Details, and then on the “Share Screen” button.

On the Mac you’re sharing the screen to, accept the screen sharing request in the notifications, and you will be able to view the screen of the remote Mac. If you want to control the screen as well, simply click on the Screen Sharing icon in the menu bar, and select “Allow controlling screen“.

Now, you will be able to view and control the remote Mac’s shared screen on the other Mac.

Start Screen Sharing on Mac to Access Your Mac Remotely

You can use these methods to share your Mac’s screen to any other Mac on your network. With the exception of iMessage, all of these methods only work if both the Macs are connected to the same network. You can use these methods for sharing screens between Macs on different networks, but you will have to forward ports for that, which is beyond the scope of this article.

You can follow these methods to share your Mac’s screen with another Mac, and control your Mac remotely. If you encounter any issues with these methods, do let us know about them in the comments section below, along with any suggestions for methods to share screens between Macs, that you think deserve to be included in this article.

Akshay has been a gadget freak since longer than he cares to admit and loves everything to do with technology. When he's not fanboying over the latest and greatest in the tech universe, he watches Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley.